Central Processing Units

10/15/2015

In an effort to foster widespread adoption of their respective architectures and IP, leading embedded processor technology providers have been steadily building IoT-focused development platforms for their engineering ecosystems. ARM, Intel, and Imagination Technologies market comprehensive platforms focused on facilitating interoperability, software development, and security. Each organization is expanding on their development support and embedded hardware and software offerings in an effort to promote the reach of their respective core architectures. Despite some overlap, these leading embedded processor core architecture providers have actually embarked on fairly different paths for the IoT.

ARM’s mbed platform looks to bring simplicity and control to those wanting access to the IoT through its industry-leading Cortex-M IP. ARM is enlisting the market leadership of its MCU-based architectures as the base of its IoT expansion. In this way, ARM is selling itself as the convenient, low-power processing solution for IoT systems and further arming those who already use its processor IP with development tools and software stack components to facilitate creating end-to-end solutions. The mbed platform currently consists of ARM’s mbed OS, mbed Device Server, and mbed developer community. Moving forward, ARM is looking to expand its mbed ecosystem and its pool of cloud partners, OEMs, ODMs, system integrators, and silicon partners. Considering ARM’s leadership across several high-volume MCU markets and its strong developer community backed by leading embedded processor supplier partners, the company is in a very strong position to maintain its leadership in small footprint systems and mobile/portable devices through evolving connected hardware requirements.

Intel’s IoT Platform, on the other hand, is more malleable and not quite as grounded in one processor family or footprint. Intel’s platform is essentially an end-to-end IoT solution reference model supported by Intel’s processor families (e.g. Quark, Atom, Core), software from its McAfee and Wind River assets, and pre-integrated third-party solutions. Intel has also made available IoT Gateway Development Kits – the DK50, DK100, DK200, and DK300 series – targeting a variety of leading connected industries with different hardware profiles. These development kits all come with fully-configured compute boards, wireless communication capabilities (with support for cellular, ZigBee, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and more), security, manageability, operating systems, and development tool sets. Further, Intel has also established the IoT Solutions Alliance, which now consists of more than 400 members, in order to promote IoT development and integration with Intel architectures. Intel is thus looking to expand usage of its architecture by offering more diversity to customers seeking to connect to the IoT.

Imagination Technologies’ Connected Processor IP Platform combines three individual products/components: Ensigma, Flowcloud, and MIPS processing. Ensigma is a set of communications and networking IP focused around radio processing and security. Flowcloud is an IoT device management platform specifically designed to accelerate the deployment of cloud-based applications. Perhaps its most ambitious push for wider MIPS adoption comes in the form of the Creator Ci20 board which launched in 2014 and was updated in May 2015. This development board is a mechanism by which developers, makers, and students can create applications for the IoT using Linux and Android. The Creator Ci20 is supported by the prpl foundation – an open source group that Imagination Technologies helped establish in May 2014 which supports MIPS to develop solutions enabling new datacenter-to-device portable software and virtualized architectures.

Although they are all expanding on their development support and partnership ecosystems, leading embedded processor technology providers are planning differently for the IoT. ARM, for instance, is further equipping its customers and partners with more of the software stack to facilitate the development of secure low-power connected systems. Intel is integrating software assets from Wind River and McAfee to accelerate IoT development across several of its processor families, growing the Intel IoT Solutions Alliance, and providing fully-configured intelligent gateway reference platforms for creating end-to-end solutions. Imagination Technologies is looking to spread the reach of MIPS through individual product adoption and open source development via the prpl foundation and its member partners including Broadcom, Cavium, Qualcomm, and more. The ability of core IP providers to net the growing IoT opportunity will be ultimately decided by the extent at which each can enable their current and prospective customers and partners to engineer end-to-end IoT solutions and services.

Freescale hosted another successful Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) last week in Austin, TX at the brand new JW Marriott and the company kept everyone buzzing with its new product announcements, updates on the NXP merger, and product showcases. In addition, we were treated with expansive and interactive keynotes by CEO Gregg Lowe who demonstrated a variety of ways in which Freescale is fostering an ecosystem dedicated to accelerating the development of next-generation systems as well as Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak.

The merger with NXP was an extremely hot topic with everyone clamoring for answers as to the implications of such a large acquisition for both sides. Back when the merger was first announced earlier this year, I found the unity to be synergistic with little overlap. The area with the greatest overlap between the two companies, RF products, was resolved in May with the sale of NXP’s RF Power business to Chinese private equity firm JAC Capital. Both Freescale and NXP have teams of 30-40 personnel aggressively working towards the integration of the companies. It was apparent at the event, though, that much is still to be done in terms of planning for the alignment of specific product families and integrating solutions between the two organizations.

The motivation behind the acquisition of NXP is multifaceted. First, security is paramount to the development of IoT products and solutions. The addition of NXP’s security IP will amplify Freescale’s penetration of such connected applications and facilitate the development of more-comprehensive solutions. Not to be forgotten is that both companies have seen strong growth in terms of revenues and profit margin and investor requirements are pushing for consolidation within the maturing embedded processor landscape. The merger is expected to save the combined entity nearly $400M in OPEX and $100M in COGS. No plant closures are expected and the company is focused on making the transition at seamless as possible for customers (so no re-qualifying, no products being moved geographically, etc.).

Freescale took a unique approach to entering the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) realm (or Bluetooth Smart as they like to use) by also integrating an IEEE 802.15.4 radio (the foundation for ZigBee and Thread) on its newly announced Kinetis KW40Z wireless MCUs for a variety of IoT applications. In addition, Freescale’s royalty-free BLE host stack is planned to support the upcoming Bluetooth Smart Mesh networking protocol. The heterogeneous Kinetis KW40Z MCU (there will be SKUs with just Bluetooth or just 802.15.4 support as well) is ripe for adding further capability to many of the emerging HAN and IoT applications leveraging mesh networks including smart lighting, smart door locks, building automation, as well as asset or fitness monitoring.

Other embedded processor announcements included:

S32K MCUs – A new automotive MCU line aimed to significantly simplify software development

i.MX 6Dual SCM (single chip module) Family – First of its new SCM portfolio of small integrated systems; fits application processor, PMIC, flash memory, embedded sw/fw, and security on a board the size of a dime

03/03/2015

NXP’s acquisition of Freescale to form a $40B company is much more than two organizations unifying under a common banner – it is the wedding of leading embedded technology suppliers with similar, yet different, market focus and goals. Both companies provide a rich mix of embedded processors, analog and mixed signal solutions, wireless ICs, and other hardware. While there is some overlap in the companies’ microcontroller, RF, and sensor products, the rest of Freescale and NXP’s offerings are hugely complimentary to each other with cross-selling opportunities in a variety of markets including automotive, consumer electronics, and industrial automation.

While the acquisition is not a revolutionary change in direction for NXP and its target verticals, the new combined company will feature a much broader software portfolio, new products, and much greater corporate size that will enable it to compete more effectively with other semiconductor juggernauts and align with growing user requirements for facilitating development of the software stack.

Freescale has carried strong corporate momentum over the last few years as a result of its aggressive push into the Internet of Things (IoT) and investments made facilitating software development for embedded engineers. Freescale supports a variety of software development tools and environments in addition to providing the free MQX real-time operating system (RTOS) and its commercial CodeWarrior OSEK RTOS. Freescale also provides a variety of software libraries, frameworks, protocol stacks, and more. NXP, on the other hand, has done very little to facilitate software development on its MCUs and other hardware products or to supply crucial components of the software stack – instead relying heavily on its software partners for support. Embedded software has been vital to Freescale’s embedded processor market share growth and differentiation.

The acquisition of Freescale propelled NXP to become the second-largest supplier of embedded MCUs in addition to now being a leading vendor of SoCs as well. The combined assets and offerings of Freescale and NXP will also enable the company to better compete with its rival in the embedded processors space, Renesas. While there are a lot of similarities between Freescale and NXP, the general disruption of a massive merger such as this will certainly challenge the steady revenue growth enjoyed by both companies during the past three years. Nonetheless, the combined company expects to be able to shed hundreds of millions of dollars each year as a result of expanded buying power and annual cost synergies.

One of the new vertical opportunities for NXP produced by the merger is in the communications and networking space for applications such as gateways, small cell base stations, SDN switches/routers, and network attached storage with the QuorIQ platforms and PowerQUICC communications processors. While the company could divest this particular business to maintain its focus on other industries, VDC believes NXP should maintain Freescale’s communications and networking processor lines to take advantage of the rampant growth expected in that space through 2018 (5-year revenue CAGR of 10.8%) caused by the growing strain on network operators and service providers due to pervasive mobile computing and the IoT.

The proposed merger (expected to close in 2H 2015) is hugely beneficial for both companies. For Freescale, the acquisition means being able to shed some of the lingering restrictions from its long-term corporate debt issues. For NXP, it’s an opportunity to become a much broader provider of embedded technology with higher margin products. The move also greatly bolsters its software support which is becoming increasingly important to embedded hardware value every year. It will be imperative that NXP continues to develop and build its investments in enabling software and tooling support to ensure a lasting, beneficial marriage of the company’s traditional and new businesses, products, and solutions.

10/16/2014

The value of an embedded processor is increasingly defined by its supporting software development tools and platforms, according to a recently published study by VDC Research. The most important selection criteria for embedded processors, according to VDC’s findings, is the availability of programming tools and software (see exhibit). The Internet of Things (IoT) will accelerate this trend as design teams wrestle with implementing often newfound low-power connectivity on systems that are generally more complex. Mitigating software development efforts is therefore an increasingly vital trait of embedded and IoT processor solutions.

Software development solutions are available from a variety of ecosystem players including processor vendors, core IP licensors, ISVs, and more. In fact, software enablement is a major component to the success of embedded processor market share leaders like Freescale, Intel, and Renesas. Freescale, for example, provides a variety of development tools tailored for its processor product families in addition to specific applications and functionality such as automotive and wireless connectivity. Software development capabilities are a major factor for third-party core architectures as well, as each has their own homegrown solutions supported by ecosystem partners. As a result, ARM, Imagination Technologies, and Intel have all made dramatic investments into their respective ecosystems for tooling, programming environments, OSs, middleware, and other software over the past several years.

Use and support of integrated development environments (IDEs) and more sophisticated software/systems engineering tools has grown in parallel with the increasing end-user requirements for more robust software stacks. Currently offered/supported by the majority of embedded processor vendors, IDEs help aggregate and centralize vendors’ development tools and other resources such as SDKs, application notes, sample programs, and more. "We expect it will become more critical for these vendors to extend the breadth of their offerings to incorporate other tools such as system configuration and automated testing tools," says VDC analyst Dan Mandell. "Embedded software requires the greatest distribution of development costs and resources for today’s projects and is a major opportunity for which processor vendors can add value/differentiation, attract new customers, and/or pursue new markets."

Embedded hardware suppliers have been forced to evolve from pushing devices to supporting comprehensive solutions. Beyond the core metrics of price and performance, software takes precedence among processor selection criteria. IDEs in particular have become a common battleground for swaying influence on purchasing decisions. Processor vendors will need to continue building their software expertise and support to encapsulate more end-user requirements and, ultimately, sell more hardware.

VDC’s recently published IoT & Embedded Processors market research report forecasts and analyzes the markets for commercially available CPUs, GPUs, MCUs, and SoCs and their role in powering future embedded systems. Click Here for more information about this study and our various other coverage areas.

05/09/2014

This year’s Axeda Connexion conference in Boston was full of interesting and insightful ideas and views of the future of M2M communications and the Internet of Things. A variety of global enterprises sponsored the event and contributed to various keynotes and sessions including AT&T, Broadcom, Deutsche Telekom, Intel, Oracle, Salesforce, Wipro, and many more. The Internet of Things will have a major impact on traditional business models for embedded hardware players, software vendors, service providers, network operators – everyone throughout the value chain. The change for end users will be as much cultural as it will be technological.

The following are five key takeaways from our time at Axeda Connexion 2014:

The bulk of the M2M opportunity is with assets already deployed today.The leading industries for M2M solutions, such as Automotive, Industrial Automation, and Oil & Gas, all have equipment and devices featuring long lifecycles and high costs. End users are looking to connect their “dumb” devices and sensors to enable new applications in a very cost-sensitive manner. The need for connectivity in legacy equipment will drive embedded hardware market form factors that can easily augment a system with connectivity – either via modules, new chipsets, peripheral systems, etc.

Security is a paramount concern of IoT development.Nearly every presentation or keynote highlighted security as a major concern for the development of connected systems. OEMs will need to regularly adjust to new threats in order to preserve the integrity of the device, platform, network, and last but not least, the data. The example frequently cited was the alarming lack of security found in many connected medical devices produced today. Ecosystem players will need to adapt new methods and lines of thinking to preserve trust (brand integrity) with end users when it comes to security in the IoT.

Those who adopt big data applications now will have a tremendous competitive advantage for years to come.Big data applications such as asset monitoring, analytics, and remote services can enable several internal and external benefits, and these competitive advantages are only increasing due to lagging adoption from competitors. For instance, analytics can provide new insights for future product designs and help facilitate iterative development in an embedded world where time-to-market pressures are constantly growing. Big data applications can also enable newfound efficiencies for internal processes such as field service and operations. Markus Breitbach, Vice President of Global Sales & Marketing of Deutsche Telekom, claims that the ROI of connected solutions is less than a year for most end users.

Strategic partnerships are a requirement for scalability in the IoT.Integration is the biggest strength of an IoT solution. As the value proposition of an embedded device shifts toward software from hardware, as a result of the proliferation of more-powerful processors, memory, and systems, traditional manufacturers will be required to become more IT-centric to supply more of the solution stack (and services). Doing so will require strategic partnerships with a variety of ecosystem players, particularly when supporting cellular connectivity or international deployments. Rob Sobie, Vice President, Healthcare at Emerson, said at his session (in so many words) that Emerson could never have pursued the IoT market on its own. To put that into perspective, Emerson generated about $24.6B in revenue last year and has approximately 132,000 employees worldwide.

Growth of M2M connectivity will be different for each industry.Each industry will have its own timeline for adoption of connectivity and big data technology. One concern in areas such as the Medical and Financial industries will be tight regulations surrounding patient/personal data, which are exacerbated by international laws. Consumer applications, though, are already permeating in developed countries with the proliferation of mobile and wearable devices. The Industrial Automation and Energy industries, though, have very clear use cases and tangible benefits from enabling a connected solution, and will continue to be among the driving vertical markets for the IoT.

04/03/2014

The appeal and value of traditional microcontrollers (MCUs) wanes with progressively integrated and intelligent embedded processing systems. Several leading suppliers are differentiating their MCU-based devices and solutions with new and innovative technologies to get a leg up on competitors in key vertical industries such as automotive and industrial automation & control. Mitigation of vertical application requirements will be imperative of embedded MCU suppliers moving forward, particularly as OEMs look to consolidate functionality and take advantage of increasingly powerful CPU cores.

For example, Freescale Semiconductor yesterday announced two new additions to its Power System Basis Chip (SBC) product line. The company’s SBCs are MCU-driven modules integrated with several popular voltage regulation functions for the automotive and industrial markets (e.g. Safety Watchdog, Fail Safe Monitoring, CAN power management, etc.). Freescale’s strategy includes allowing OEMs to substitute the MCU of the SBC with another from the company’s extensive processor product lines – enabling much greater flexibility with evolving application requirements (low power, functionality, performance) and BOM. These SBCs take full advantage of Freescale’s expertise and rich history in both power management and MCU technology and will help the company further secure its roots in these domains as a whole.

STMicroelectronics is another MCU supplier growing its value proposition with expanded functionality tailored for a broad set of vertical market applications. The company has been building up its Secure MCU product line over the past few years to enable protected communication for a variety of devices spanning mobile phones, identification cards, point-of-sale terminals, and more. STMicroelectronics’ Secure MCUs span a diverse array of banking and security certifications and can include support for a variety of cryptographic standards.

Freescale’s attach-compatible SBCs and STMicroelectronics’ Secure MCUs are just a couple examples of how embedded processor suppliers are adapting to escalating application requirements using their principal expertise in adjacent technologies. The days of the general-purpose MCU are numbered, and suppliers need to generate more value in new ways beyond incremental advances to legacy components to remain competitive.

02/24/2014

VDC Research has made the journey across the Atlantic again this year to the Embedded World tradeshow in Nuremberg, Germany. It is always exciting to see what industry leaders will be announcing and exhibiting at the show, and this year is no exception. The following is a brief list of some of the major exhibitors and announcements to look forward to over the next few days:

AMDAMD will once again be present at Embedded World. AMD will be offering insight into their brand new Embedded G-Series SoC mini-ITX mainboard. The AMD booth will also feature live demos focused on casino gaming, industrial HMIs, factory automation, industrial tablets, digital signage, medical, security and surveillance, virtualization, and more.

ARMARM and Keil will be showcasing the latest edition of Keil MDK-ARM, MDK Professional, and ARM DS-5 Development Studio Professional Edition. MDK-ARM is a complete software development environment for ARM-based microcontrollers. Ease-of-use is a primary trait of the MDK-ARM development environment, though it is also powerful enough for a variety of demanding embedded applications.

IBMDespite popular belief, IBM will not be selling its chip manufacturing plant, and is instead focusing on finding a joint-venture partner to continue manufacturing its semiconductors used in personal computers, game machines, and other devices. Currently, microelectronics manufacturing accounts for less than 2 percent of IBM’s revenue, but considering IBM’s efforts to find a joint-venture partner to help increase the competitiveness of their semiconductor unit, we’re hoping for some exciting news at Embedded World.

IntelIntel, along with Wind River and McAfee, will be in attendance at Embedded World where the company will display how it is accelerating the development and deployment of intelligent devices, creating systems by connecting legacy devices to the cloud, and enabling end-to-end analytics to transform businesses with big data. Embedded hardware products such as Intel’s industrial motherboards with the newly developed Q87/ATOM/Bay Trail with fanless design, PCI BUS, and legacy serial ports will be on display amongst other innovative embedded systems.

RenesasRenesas will be busy at Embedded World hosting Europe’s first MCU Car Rally competition; the company is offering the opportunity for teams of students from across Europe to design a self-guided car from a kit of mechanical components, using hardware and software supplied by Renesas. Renesas will also be showcasing a variety of products including the R-Car family of SoCs, industrial Ethernet solutions, RX Functional Safety solutions, and more.

12/05/2013

Shortly after Apple announced its iPhone 5s would feature a 64-bit processor, Samsung quickly followed that it was also developing a 64-bit processor for mobile devices. Other major companies have since announced their intentions to release 64-bit mobile processors in the near future too; reports rumor that Broadcom, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm could unveil their new processors as early as January at CES 2014. This led us to ask, how much real value does a 64-bit processor currently bring to mobile products?

32-bit processors can only utilize a maximum 4GB of RAM. With access to 264 memory locations, 64-bit can process significantly more data. However, memory requirements in current mobile devices are far from reaching this 4 GB ceiling. For example, the iPhone 5s only features 1 GB of memory, in terms of RAM, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is equipped with 3 GB. Clearly, memory is not a major concern in the development of mobile devices in comparison to other factors and would not drive the need for 64-bit processors in this arena.

Not only can the 64-bit architecture process larger quantities of data, but more memory locations increase data processing velocity. However, while hardware capabilities are improved, software is still a step behind. Lagging software is forcing processor OEMs to develop 64-bit processors with backwards compatibility for 32-bit software environments, as seen with Apple’s A7 chip and upcoming 64-bit processors based on the ARMv8 architecture. Yet, since 32-bit programming platforms are not optimized for 64-bit processors, devices cannot take full advantage of the amplified volume of memory locations and run with only marginal performance gains. Certain applications may even run slower since they are working in a sub-optimal 32-bit environment.

Currently, it seems most companies are developing 64-bit processors to remain competitive with Apple’s A7, despite a lack of drastic improvements to performance. Consumer perception and marketing drive current development so companies can have a 64-bit processor in their specifications. Yet in the longer run, the 32-bit to 64-bit shift could alter mobile devices’ role to the average consumer. Mobile devices may pose as an increasingly viable and competitive alternative to PCs, able to process data at comparable speeds. Such a transition is still years away, though, as even the transition from 16-bit to 32-bit for PCs took a around 10 years.

As companies rush to release their own 64-bit mobile processors, much investment in R&D is spent inefficiently on creating working products and not necessarily optimizing embedded hardware to its full potential. With branding as the driver for development, the current use of 64-bit processors in mobile devices remains more of a marketing gimmick than technological advancement and will likely remain so over the next couple years.

12/02/2013

Recent announcements stemming from Intel’s annual analyst day have provided ample insight into the company’s embedded strategy to maintain and grow the x86 architecture. While Intel’s plans to quadruple tablet processor shipments next year would put a dent into ARM’s share in that arena, the company’s expanded custom foundry business offers significantly more long-term potential. Intel will be providing access to Intel Architecture that can be added to customers’ IP cores in system-on-chip devices. The company will also allow customers to select their level of engagement, from design and test services to purely manufacturing. Though many details on Intel’s refocused foundry business are scant, we believe it has the potential to be a prominent contributor to x86 growth over the next several years.

Intel’s expanded foundry services greatly support x86 in a number of ways:

First, Intel retains the control to pick and choose exactly what they will fabricate. Intel isn’t going to cannibalize sales of their own processors through manufacturing SoCs for fabless competitors in the embedded markets that it plays in. The company can also equally regulate the integration of foreign IP.

Second, expanded customization services will help Intel’s new Quark SoCs in penetrating new and traditional embedded markets. Intel will surely discount customization services of its homegrown productsbecause of the higher margins captured from semiconductor design. Such pricing reductions are the premise for Intel’s planned expansion into tablet devices.

Third, Intel’s foundry ecosystem is growing to accommodate increasing flexibility in development platforms. In addition to Intel EDA tools, customers will be able to leverage software development tools from Cadence, Synopsys, and Open-Silicon.

By expanding fabrication services, Intel stands to grow its architectural share at the expense of dedicated foundries. The expansion also enables Intel to become more proactive to market shifts. Though specific details on Intel’s new semi-customization services remain scarce, we believe the growing foundry business will help grow x86 in embedded markets over the long-term.

10/09/2013

VDC is pleased to announce the publication of its annual outlook for the global market for embedded CPUs, MCUs and FPGAs. This research is an invaluable strategic and tactical planning tool for chip, tool, and board vendors.

Hightlights include:

We expect ARM to continue to take CPU market
share from Intel in the years to come, though Intel will succeed in defending
its position in high-performance applications.

Xilinx will cede FPGA market share to growing
competitors Altera, Lattice Semiconductor, and Microsemi – who all stand to benefit
from strong global demand for communications equipment, and OEMs’ continued
migration away from ASICs.

The MCU market will grow rapidly, with the
automotive sector representing an increasingly large share of the market.

Heterogeneous computing will drive big changes in
the markets for all discrete processing technologies. As integrated
architectures are used to consolidate functionality and boost processor
efficiency, traditional vendors will need to deploy new business strategies to drive
growth and margins.

The importance of tools when selecting a chip
will drive additional M&A activity, as large chip vendors swallow smaller
tool providers. Potentially attractive
acquisition targets include DDC-I, IAR, or Lauterbach.

The market for these embedded processing
technologies (CPUs, MCUs and FPGAs combined) will grow to over $US 40 billion
by 2017, at a compound annual growth rate of 6.9% overall.